Born on December
12, 1929, in London, John Osborne would eventually change the
face of British theatre. His father, an advertising copywriter,
died in 1941, leaving Osborne an insurance settlement which he
used to finance a boarding school education at Belmont College
in Devon. Still heartbroken, however, over his father's death,
Osborne could not focus on his studies and left after striking
the headmaster.
He returned to London and lived briefly with his mother, a
barmaid. He became involved in the theatre when he took a job
tutoring a touring company of young actors. Osborne went on to
serve as actor-manager for a string of repertory companies and
soon decided to try his hand at playwriting. When George Devine
placed a notice in The Stage in 1956, Osborne decided
to submit one of his plays, Look Back in Anger. Not only
was his play produced, but it is considered by many critics to
be the turning point in postwar British theatre. Osborne's protagonist,
Jimmy Porter, captured the angry and rebellious nature of the
postwar generation, a dispossessed lot who were clearly unhappy
with things as they were in the decades following World War II.
Jimmy Porter came to represent an entire generation of "angry
young men."
In his next play, The Entertainers (1957), Osborne
continued to examine the state of the country, this time using
three generations of a family of entertainers to symbolize the
decline of England after the war. Laurence Olivier played Archie
Rice, a struggling comedian, and the role resulted in one of
his most famous performances. An experimental piece, The Entertainer
alternated realistic scenes with Vaudeville performances, and
most critics agreed that it was an appropriate follow-up to the
wild success of Look Back in Anger. After this, however,
the quality of Osborne's output became erratic. Although he produced
a number of hits including Luthor (1961), a play about
the leader of the Reformation, and Inadmissible Evidence
(1965), the study of a frustrated solicitor at a law firm, he
also produced a string of unimportant works. Critics began to
accuse him of not fulfilling his early potential, and audiences
no longer seemed effected by Osborne's rage. Recognizing this,
Osborne described himself in his last play as "a churling,
grating note, a spokesman for no one but myself, with deadening
effect, cruelly abusive, unable to be coherent about my despair."
Osborne died as a result of complications from Diabetes on
December 24, 1994, in Shropshire, England. He left behind a large
body of works for the stage as well as several autobiographical
works. Several of his plays were also adapted for film including
Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer. In 1963,
Osborne won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Tom Jones.
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